Group seeking mayoral control of Detroit Public Schools to present signatures to council

AP PhotoDetroit Public Schools financial manager Robert Bobb, right, and Mayor Dave Bing attend a groundbreaking at Martin Luther King High School in Detroit, Friday, June 18, 2010.

A group claiming Detroit's elected school board has failed students plans to ask the City Council to put a referendum before voters to place control of the struggling district in the hands of Mayor Dave Bing.

Members of Change for Better Schools said they will present 30,704 petition signatures to council members Tuesday, and that only the council can put the matter on November's ballot.

But voter passage will not be enough to put Bing in charge. Changes in how public school districts are governed must be made by Michigan lawmakers. The Change for Better Schools group hopes approval of the measure by Detroit voters will persuade the state legislature to make such a change.

"The school board and many of us, quite frankly, have failed our children," group member Alice Thompson told reporters Monday. "We need to make change for better schools. We need to make it now, regardless of how challenging or how, perhaps, unpopular."

The plan is opposed by some on the 11-member school board, which could be eliminated.

Detroit's schools are considered among the lowest performing urban districts in the country, routinely scoring poorly on standardized tests. Only 3 percent of Detroit fourth-graders were proficient on the 2009 Michigan Educational Assessment Program math test, according to Change for Better Schools.

Detroit's graduation rate for 2008-2009 was 58 percent, compared with the national rate of 89 percent. The district's 27 percent dropout rate over 2008-2009 was more than three times the national rate of 8.7 percent.

The petition language calls for Bing to appoint a superintendent to oversee the day-to-day operations of the 87,000-student district, while an appointed advisory board of parents, teachers and community leaders would replace the existing school board.

"The current system, which places primary responsibility for public schools in the hands of the School Board, is clearly failing our kids," Bing said Monday in a statement. "Over 30,000 Detroiters signed a petition demanding that we begin a serious discussion of that change. I ask City Council to respect the wishes of the citizens who signed petitions to give our community the opportunity to vote on this critical issue."

School Board President Anthony Adams said he will attend Tuesday's City Council meeting when the petitions are expected to be presented.

"We won't resort to any personal attacks on the committee," Adams said of the Change for Better Schools group. "We will stay focused on trying to come up with the best plan of action to improve academic performance and achievement in Detroit public schools."

Change for Better Schools said the district has had four superintendents since 2006.

It currently is being run by emergency financial manager Robert Bobb, who was appointed in March 2009 by Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm to fix the district's finances.

Bobb has submitted a balanced budget to the state, but the district still faces a legacy budget deficit of more than $300 million.

His original one-year contract was extended and is due to expire next March.

"If no new system of governance is in place by then, the same governance system will resume control," Thompson said. "Failure to act now guarantees mismanagement of our school system."